Yet another example of police state style repression is eloquently chronicled in a Progressive Magazine September 17, 2007 story by Matthew Rothschild, Here, detailing illegal confiscation of photographs and abuse of a student photographer by police at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Syracuse, NY. I know it's getting a bit repetitive to replay these stories, but shining the spolight may be the only thing that can still save us from such Nazi style facism.
More below the fold.
The story chronicles the trial of Mariam Jukaku, a 24 year old graduate journalism student at Syracuse University. Assigned by her photography professor to take pictures, she proceeded to do just that, snapping photos of the exterior of a VA hospital entrance and flag as she passed by. VA police rushed to intercept her, detained her inside the building, demanded her identification, whether she was a citizen, and then proceeded to review and delete the pictures on her digital camera. "The male officer was telling me it was illegal to photograph federal property, and he also said I couldn’t take pictures of veterans without permission," she said.
To their credit, the Syracuse Post-Standard, where Jukaku is an intern, stood firmly behind her and roundly criticized the VA in an editorial. The VA back-pedaled a bit after the editorial, but then dug in with claims about the necessity of deleting picutres taken of patients' faces, which it claimed were illegal to take.
Looking at incidents such as that experienced by Mariam Jukaku, and others chronicled here and elsewhere on Daily Kos, one would be led to agree with the argument addressed by Daniel Ellsberg in a column published Thursday. Writing on CommonDreams.org, Ellsberg posits that while many of us are fearful of a coup in the future, the coup has already occurred. In a rambling editorial, he explains that BushCo and Cheney have planned and executed a series of maneuvers that have grown the roots of government by a single, authoritarian executive ever since their elevation to office by the Supreme Court in 2000. The only thing missing, Ellsberg maintains, is the second act -- another 9/11 style calamity to enable BushCo to declare complete emergency law and have congress vote him all the remaining power he needs.
The mistake many analyses of BushCo make, he suggests, is the presumption that the Cheney - Rumsfeld - Rove triumverate actually ever believed in democracy. Instead, according to Ellsberg, a reading of their public service records reveals little respect for limited government and seperation of powers and a great deal of reverence for an every stronger executive branch.
Observing the litany of police abuses, repression and official hooliganism that has grown ever more overt over the past seven years, it is hard to refute such arguments. I could be wrong, but I think that police abuse of a graduate student for taking pictures could be the most serious inidcator yet of the tide of facism sweeping the land.
Mind you, I choose that term carefully. While Jukaku was not physically assaulted, she was none then less put in the position of victim of police over reaching and abuse of authority while having her rights as a citizen trampled and ripped away. She was, in fact, arrested by two officers of the federal government, detained briefly and released without charge. Such activity has only one purpose when no law has actually been violated, and that is intimidation. These are the practices agents of tyranny in every age utilize to quash dissent pre-emptively.
As a photo hound myself, I can identify closely with Jukaku, and share a similar story that might shed light on the extent of our spiral into despotism. In 1973, I spent a month visiting the Soviet Union on a student tour. It was Brezhnev's time, and the country was enduring a particularly harsh and stagnant period of Communits tyranny. The first thing I did, upon entering the country, was break the law by taking pictures of through the windows of the bus as we rode from the airport to our hotel. Our guide, a wonderful agent of the state tourism agency, firmly ordered me to stop taking pictures and warned me it was illegal to do so except in designated areas.
That experience, I suppose, raised the chill in my bones a bit higher when I read about Jukaku's encounter with federal agents. If the simple act of snapping pictures has been decreed illegal by the executive, then we are worse off than even my paranoid mind feared. We have moved past another way point on the road to tyranny, with executive fiat taking the place of thoughtful legislative ation. This, of course, is one more step away from representative, limited government.
The VA's spokespersons can make all the denials they wish, but the damage has been done. Another citizen has been deprived of her rights and property without due process, and we are all injured in the end. It is an injury that, at this point, I doubt can be undone, since there has been no acknowledgement of wrong doing or effort to disciplne the over zealousness of the federal agents.